[asterisk-users] ITSP's no longer supporting IAX?

[Roger Marquis]

Steve Totaro wrote:
> I understand you are a developer and you want IAX2 to be great.
> That is your job, but the fact is that it is not and has caused
> audio and security problems for YEARS in EVERY release. It
> should "bug" you and everyone at Digium that waves the IAX2
> flag.

Can you elaborate on these "audio and security problems" Steve?  Looking
at the two protocol specs I cannot see a basis for your claim.  IAX
doesn't embed the local IP address in the packet data but that's surely no
substantive security.  It does separate data and signaling at the
application-level, but again, that's no basis for such a claim.

Protocols must be looked at separately from their implementations.  From
the various responses it appears that Asterisk 1.4's implementation of IAX
has flaws.  These do not necessarily reflect on the protocol.  OTOH, there
are a lot of engineers with SIP skill and experience who, naturally, are
concerned with their investment in time, education, and experience.  While
this may or may not apply to Sonicwall engineering, it's also true that any
streaming protocol will be better handled by devices that process packets
in ASICs (high-end firewalls) rather than CPUs (PCs and low-end firewalls).

FWIW (2 data points) I get uniformly better service from our IAX trunk
provider than our SIP trunk provider.  No idea whether that's protocol,
implementation (1.4 on my side), or provider-related though I suspect the
later.

Roger Marquis